 Her legacy |
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You can't even begin to imagine...
You can't even begin to imagine...
Life after losing a child has many different faces. There are no words in the dictionary that define the pain and heartache felt.
If your on the outside looking in, in your mind you probably "think" it must be hard for them when...
maybe when they visit her grave, or maybe when they sit in her bedroom, or see her car in the driveway every day. I'm sure you think it's hard on the day she was killed and her birthday. Of course, the holidays.
Everyone seems to think that's how it goes, and the rest of your life will get back to "normal" in time.
THINK AGAIN!
First of all, there is no "normal" anymore.
And for me, anyway, sitting on her grave and talking with her is comfort. After all, that's where I last left her.
Elizabeth's grave the day of her funeral
Elizabeth's grave June 1, her 4th Angel Birthday
Originally I couldn't go to the accident scene. It wasn't long though, that I needed to go there. Her boyfriend took me.
The scene of the accident, with flowers from her boyfriend, and a cross made by her best friend the week following her death
The scene of her accident today~Sissy and Chuck placing flowers on her permanent cross
Now, I do go there often, knowing that was the last place she was herself, having fun, laughing. I know too, that is the place where her brother sat with her, lovingly comforting her until the helicopter flew her away to one hospital, and him to another. I lay my hand on the spot in the road where the officials so precisely marked where she laid, wishing with all my being I could have been there that day. You try, in your mind to imagine what was happening, what was she thinking just before it happened.
I lay in her bed, looking at everything in her room, which remains just as she left it that day that she last walked out of there, never to return. The pictures she had just hung up. The ones she took in New York City, and in photography class.
Looking at all her awards and ribbons she won that are hanging on the wall from showing her horse that she loved so much.
Elizabeth showing her horse in a show
And the pictures she took, and developed herself of her boyfriend. They were her pride and joy.
Elizabeth and Blake, the love of her life~
Memorial table in remembrance of their once in a lifetime love, at her funeral
I remember when she would want me to lay in her bed with her and watch movies, especially when it was raining.
Elizabeth (right) and one of her best friends,Courtney~ at a horse show
I go to the barn and just look at her horse, reminiscing about the times when she was there, brushing her, giving her a bath getting her ready for a horse show. Practicing her jumping over and over and over again. The good times and bad, and how hard she worked for what she loved so much.
Elizabeth practicing her jumping
I sit in her car in the driveway, just as she left it with pictures of her and her friend Tiffany still stuck wherever she could fit them. I still smell her perfume. I try to imagine when, just a few weeks prior, her and I were sitting right there in that very car going to the airport for our mother daughter trip to New York City.
Wishing. Wishing, and wishing some more that we could somehow go back to that time and do it all over. Only on June 1, I would never let her walk out of the door for the last time.
I guess everyone thinks these things are hard. and they are. only you don't realize that they are far from the only things. Everything is hard. Simply living is hard, for there are memories and pain in everything, and everywhere.
Your entire world comes to a screeching halt. It feels as if you have been elevated somewhere out of this world as we know it, and are watching everything carry on, while you don't.
You leave the graveyard after saying good night to your child, and watch as people go about their lives. How can everything go on, when NOTHING is the same. The world, MY WORLD, no longer exists.
The days you are able to function, is somewhat in a "fog". You do what you HAVE to do to exist, and nothing more.
The pain is EVERYWHERE...
Going to the grocery store is just a normal activity?
Think again.
As you walk down the aisle picking up what you need your eyes catch a glimpse of something she loved. That's all it takes!
Either you hide your face and break down right then and there, or you leave your cart and rush to your car.
Walking past each and every aisle memories come rushing over you like a giant tidal wave.
There's the baby aisle. I remember buying those type of diapers...
I remember she loved that type of baby food...
I remember when she made the worst face because she didn't like that one...
When you pick up a pack of steaks all of sudden you have walked into that brick wall again at full speed ahead...
don't need to buy that package, after all, I need one less of everything!
You buy it anyway just to avoid that knife piercing pain in your heart.
You make your way back home through the hustle of people going on about their lives while it takes everything in your being to keep the car on the road because the tears fill your eyes when you pass the restaurant that we made so many memories at. Somedays you HAVE to go there, maybe it's just to pretend things are still the same because it's too painful to do otherwise.
Other days you can't drive by it fast enough and turn your head to avoid seeing the sign at all before you have another break down.
Arriving home is another thing...
Unloading the groceries you remember when she was little and tried to "help" like a big girl and dropped the entire bag she was trying to carry.
Then you remember when she got older and was so busy she wasn't usually home and you did it yourself, all the while reminiscing about the earlier times.
Trying to make dinner...
You open the pack of steaks you have purposely purchased one too many of, and suddenly there's that brick wall again!
I don't NEED to cook 5 baked potatoes, after all, there's only 4 of us now.
You wrestle with your emotions and finally decide to try to minimize the pain you will cook it anyway, only to find yourself crying so hard while you wash a potato that you know won't have anyone there to eat it, that you can't see the sink.
I, for the most part, find myself living within the past. It's so much happier there. All three of my precious children are once again happy, healthy, and ALIVE!
You daydream about your daughters' wedding plans, never once do you daydream about her funeral plans. You shouldn't have to. It shouldn't be this way. THIS pain is unspeakable!
FORGET THE ANNIVERSARIES!
Anniversaries were once "happy" times. Birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, Halloween, July 4th.
Now they only mark pain. Each one brings back it's own pain of "remembering when".
The anniversary of her death...
You re-live the entire week minute by minute...
what I can remember of it, anyway.
The rest of it is somewhere out there. Where, I'm really not sure.
Somedays I try to remember, with a few things showing up here and there.
What time was it?
What exactly was I doing?
WHY? WHY? and oh yea...WHY !!!
What did I say?
What did I do?
I now live each and every hour in uncharted territory...
I vaguely remember wandering into it...I have never wandered out!
Elizabeth's Legacy continues to this day. She has not left us, totally. There are so many things she does to try to comfort me. I usually don't tell anyone, because I KNOW they won't understand, and probably think I REALLY have lost it. I know it's her, and no...they are NOT coincidences!!!
In the beginning, I tried to keep a journal of all of those times she did things, it became to be so many, and so often, I wasn't able to keep up.
She tries so hard, especially when I am at my worst.
Thank you, my precious Angel, I know your still with me...what I would give to have you here, though!
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